Lieutenant Commander James J. Hughes, skipper of an anchored American gunboat, had just finished lunch when he was informed that a lookout on the bridge had sighted an approaching formation of aircraft but was unable to identify them. Joining the lookout, Hughes stared up into the sunlit sky and saw three large twin-engine planes in a V formation at high altitude. Word came that an Army observer on the boat deck had identified them as Japanese.
As Hughes squinted upward in curiosity to see these aircraft that were so far from their home bases in Japan, an explosion erupted on the port bow very near the bridge. Hughes was thrown against the engine order telegraph and was rendered unconscious, with many cuts to his face and one leg fractured. While a second bomb struck the port side amidships, several of the crew managed to man three of the ship’s four machine guns and began to fire at several descending dive bombers that had joined the attack. In the rush to take action, several of the men were shirtless, and Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ernest Mahlman would later be both teased and commended (with a Navy Cross) as he manned one of the guns wearing no pants. The executive officer, Lieutenant A. F. Anders, tried to fire one of the guns but was wounded in both hands, making it impossible for him to continue.
Despite his wounds, Anders rushed to the bridge and found Hughes unconscious. With the attack still ongoing, the wounded executive officer began giving orders, when he was struck in the throat by flying shrapnel. Now unable to speak, he wrote his orders in pencil on the back of a chart and with a piece of chalk on the bulkhead.
At this juncture, the reader might reasonably assume that this is an account of one vessel’s experience during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. But this tragic incident took place on the Yangtze River in China four years earlier, on 12 December 1937. With the Japanese and Chinese in the midst of a horrific war, the USS Panay (PR-5) was on patrol in China as a neutral to protect American interests there when inexplicably attacked.
When Captain Hughes regained consciousness and was made aware that his ship was heavily damaged, unable to get under way and sinking, he ordered “abandon ship.” As the crewmen made their way to shore, they were strafed by machine-gun fire. The captain ordered the men to hide among the high reeds there to avoid the onslaught.
With the attack at last over, the crew moved inshore to evade the Japanese, spending several arduous days enduring the elements while transporting and trying to care for the more than 40 wounded. Storekeeper First Class Charles L. Ensminger and Coxswain Edgar C. Hulsebus succumbed to their wounds, as did an Italian reporter who had been on board at the time.
Unlike the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor—or the later attack on Pearl Harbor—this incident did not provoke a substantial public outcry in America; one notable exception occurred in a New York movie theater when a man rose and ordered, “Everyone stand up!” when the newsreel showed flag-draped coffins being hoisted aboard the USS Augusta (CA-31) for the journey home. With the nation feeling deeply isolationist and as yet unprepared for war, the U.S. government accepted the Japanese explanation that the attack had been a mistake, along with an apology and reparations in the amount of $2,214,007.36. In Japan, although some reactions differed, most Japanese were genuinely remorseful.
Much changed in the next four years.